From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: pinard@iro.umontreal.ca (=?utf-8?Q?Fran=C3=A7ois?= Pinard) Subject: Weight of headers Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 21:42:33 -0500 Message-ID: <8762euxqli.fsf@iro.umontreal.ca> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([208.118.235.92]:46442) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1S1U4P-0002uj-NM for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Sat, 25 Feb 2012 21:42:47 -0500 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1S1U4J-0004x5-Tn for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Sat, 25 Feb 2012 21:42:41 -0500 Received: from 206-248-137-202.dsl.teksavvy.com ([206.248.137.202]:56474 helo=mercure.epsilon-ti.ca) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1S1U4J-0004wv-Ne for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Sat, 25 Feb 2012 21:42:35 -0500 List-Id: "General discussions about Org-mode." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-orgmode-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: emacs-orgmode-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org To: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org Hello, all Org friends. Here is a need I have once in a while, but for which I do not even have realistic suggestions to offer (at least, so I feel). Maybe someone would offer more precise ideas. :-) When I have a big Org file which I want to re-organize, one of the criteria I use is to manage the overall plan, always keeping a logical organization of things of course, and move things around so top-level headers become of comparable weights. By "weight", I mean the amount of contents, which is a fuzzy concept (it could be measured as the number of sub-headers or sub-items, the depth of structure, or even the raw number or lines or characters). It may look strange, but this is not so bizarre after all. When reading a book, it is unusual to have a chapter having one page next to a chapter having hundreds of page; we expect that the effort of reading a chapter is not widely different from the effort of reading another. In the same way, if I decide to tackle the topics under a header, I would expect that the energy needed somehow announces the energy that would be required to handle another level at the same level. Of course, there could be quite a variance, but nevertheless, I would like to keep that variance within bounds. And recursively! The same way I would like to work an weight equilibrium for top-level headers, I would like to do the same for the sub-headers of a given header. My need here is to get an estimate of the weight of displayed headers. I could of course expand the whole document and page through to get an idea, but at least in the document I'm currently handling, I'm just overwhelmed. (This is not the only document triggering this in me, I remember having felt that need many times when I was using WorkFlowy). I once thought that colors could encode the weight, but it just would not fit Org mode so far that I understand it. However, it seems that, here and there, Org uses some overly magic to display extra information -- for example, like with `C-c C-x C-d (`org-clock-display')'. Maybe that some similar machinery could be use to display header weights? Or maybe this would be overkill, because there are simpler ways which I just do not know? Fran=C3=A7ois